


I Will Make this Sacrifice

by AriadneKurosaki



Series: IchiRuki Month 2020 [11]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, F/M, IchiRuki Month, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:20:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25878076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriadneKurosaki/pseuds/AriadneKurosaki
Summary: This wasn't supposed to happen. They won the war, after all.
Relationships: Kuchiki Rukia/Kurosaki Ichigo
Series: IchiRuki Month 2020 [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1858906
Comments: 15
Kudos: 65





	I Will Make this Sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Day 13, Sacrifice
> 
> This one hurt to write, so it will probably hurt to read. Another lyric song title: it's from the Cruxshadows' "Winterborn".

In the aftermath of the battle with Yhwach, Ichigo leaps back through the portal and finds Rukia with Sode no Shirayuki released in shikai as she guards Orihime. He is seized by a near-hysterical relief that she is there, that she is _safe_. He finds himself grabbing and kissing her, full on the mouth, as Orihime and Renji look on in shock. Rukia melts into him, arms coming up to grab what remains of the front of his shihakusho to keep his mouth on hers.

Aizen just smirks knowingly before he is bound and carted back off to Mugen.

After the carnage and horror of the Quincy war, Soul Society begins to rebuild. Ichigo, who is slowly recovering the powers that Yhwach tried to take from him, stays behind to help. There are buildings so destroyed by the war that the only thing to do is clean up the rubble.

The rebuilding is a good excuse to stay in Soul Society – with Rukia. Their relationship is nascent and might be not entirely sanctioned, but apparently Captain-Commander Kyouraku and even Byakuya are willing to overlook that for the time being.

Despite the war, there are still hollows, and as two of the shockingly few Shinigami who are still able to fight the more powerful of those monsters, Ichigo and Rukia are frequently sent – together or separately – to deal with incursions into Soul Society by more powerful hollows. Usually it’s ridiculously easy to handle; frequently, neither of them even needs more than a few minutes to destroy their opponent.

Then there is a report of a particularly strong hollow, possibly even an arrancar. Ichigo and Rukia set out together. “It’s probably Grimmjow looking for a fight,” Ichigo jokes as they flash-step to the spot from which the report came.

Rukia laughs, the sound spilling through the air.

It’s not Grimmjow, and it’s not any of the other Espada with whom Soul Society has a fragile agreement. It’s tall and humanoid but covered in the bone of a hollow from the neck down. Bone fragments trail over its head and down its back. One eye, black as night, can be seen while the other is covered by neon-green hair.

Rukia releases Sode no Shirayuki with a thought and Ichigo follows, pulling Zangetsu’s two blades from his back and hip. The arrancar just laughs and forms a cero, blasting red power at them both. Ichigo dodges left and Rukia right, already calling out, “Some no mai, Tsukishiro!”

Without a word the arrancar dodges the circle of ice and fires off another cero. Ichigo’s getsuga similarly has no effect, and the green-haired arrancar draws its sword: a cruelly curved blade.

This is a more challenging fight than Ichigo has had in the weeks after the war, and he dives into the fray of battle while Rukia keeps the arrancar corralled with judicious use of her second dance.

And then the arrancar announces its resurrección in a growl that Ichigo doesn’t understand. The blade grows and splits, spitting power like a fountain as it reforms into a pair of oversized sickles. The arrancar changes as well, bone reforming atop its head into a crown-like headdress.

A gran ray cero erupts from its mouth and dodging that, Ichigo can’t dodge the sickle in the arrancar’s left hand. The handle extends and the blade catches him at the waist, sending him flying and bleeding while Rukia tries to block the arrancar with the ice of another Hakuren.

It isn’t enough: the other sickle catches her and rips through flesh before she can dodge. The other hollows over the past weeks were easy. Still depleted from the war, and now injured, Rukia struggles to stand as Ichigo recovers.

But there is no time to summon his bankai, and the arrancar slashes again while Ichigo aims both blades and calls, more desperately, “ _Getsuga j_ _ūjish_ _ō,_ ” out of breath and bleeding from the wound in his side. A second wound joins the first and Ichigo collapses to the ground a few feet away.

Rukia is up again and she leaps between Ichigo and the arrancar to give him time to stand back up.

She falls. Blood sprays. Ichigo breaks.

Zangetsu takes over, as he hasn’t done since Ichigo’s zanpakutō was re-forged in the royal realm, and the arrancar’s eyes widen in shock as Ichigo grows white bone horns and tosses gran ray ceros combined with getsuga tensho like it’s _nothing_. In seconds, the arrancar is dead, body dissolving into so much reishi.

Zangetsu lets go, white bone falls to pieces, and Ichigo is Ichigo again, skidding in the dust to Rukia and dropping at her side.

“Ichi—go,” Rukia murmurs as he scrambles with kido, never his strong suit, to try and stop the bleeding. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t—just stay with me, Rukia. We’ll get help, I can get us back to the Seireitei, to the Fourth.” He tears wrapping from Zangetsu’s hilt and starts wrapping.

“I love you,” she whispers. There is blood _everywhere_. It’s soaking through the knees of Ichigo’s hakama and through the white ribbon that flows from Sode no Shirayuki’s hilt.

“Rukia, _don’t_ die…” Ichigo’s mouth finds hers as he pulls her close, heedless of the blood. He whispers “I love you too” into her mouth one last time as he stands, lifting her into his arms and using flash-step to get her back to the Seireitei.

Three heartbeats later, she is gone.

Ichigo reaches the Seireitei with only her body in his arms, eyes shell-shocked and body doused chest to ankles in his lover’s blood. The world around him fades into a roaring buzz of other Shinigami. Byakuya is there with a face of stone while his reiryoku, under iron control for decades, seethes grief. Renji yells in his face, demanding to know what happened. Kenpachi – of all people – looks sympathetic. He is _freezing_ , cold as ice, and his body shivers all over.

He won’t let go of her body. He carries her to the Fourth as though there is still hope, still time to save her. It isn’t until hours later when Hanatarō and Isane beg that Ichigo, slumped on the ground in the courtyard of the Fourth Division’s relief station, lets his hands and arms stop clutching at her. Their hands peel her away; her blood, their blood, has started to dry and there is a strange sucking and tearing sound as his uniform resists being parted from hers. There is a howling that echoes through the air, too, and Ichigo has no idea it is coming from him. He doesn’t even notice when Hanatarō starts to heal him.

Someone helps him change out of his shihakusho and wash the blood off. His throat is raw from screaming; he doesn’t even feel it.

Rukia’s body is laid on a funeral pyre two days later. Every captain and lieutenant, every seated officer able to move, is there. None of the captains wear their haoris, standing instead in only their shihakusho. Captain-Commander Kyōraku has even removed his floral kimono and hat as a sign of respect and mourning.

Byakuya stands next to him as she burns. They both wear jet black kimono, and Ichigo has shorn his hair. At one point he is certain that the only thing keeping him from flinging himself on the pyre with her is Byakuya’s hand, holding fast to his shoulder in an iron grip when he tries to step forward into the flames.

When all that is left are dying embers and all but Byakuya have drifted away, Ichigo sees it: Sode no Shirayuki, lying unharmed. Heedless of the heat he walks forward and grabs for the blade. Usually zanpakutō break or vanish with the death of their Shinigami. He does not know why hers has not.

Icy cold sweeps through Ichigo’s soul, strangely comforting despite the deluge in his heart.

He spends another week in the Fourth Division, though his physical wounds are healed. The division members watch him as if he might do something impulsive. He keeps Sode no Shirayuki with him his every waking moment, and at night the blade leans against the wall with Zangetsu. On the seventh day, Hanatarō comes to talk to him. No one knows what passes between them; Hanatarō never speaks a word of it to anyone, and no one is brave (or stupid) enough to ask Ichigo.

That night when Ichigo sits _jinzen_ , his inner world is…different. The windows have shattered in every skyscraper and some have collapsed altogether; it is alternately snowing and hailing. He looks around and spots Zangetsu, whose hair is shorn as short as his wielder’s. His skin is still dead-white, but he wears a black kimono instead of the white shihakusho.

“I don’t mind sharing for a while, King,” he says quietly into the rain.

“What?”

Zangetsu raises a hand and points. “Guess you might not have noticed. But she’s been here a few days now. Since…” He shudders openly. “Since the Queen died.”

The breath hitches in Ichigo’s lungs. Snow swirls around him and he dodges fist-sized chunks of hail to get to the woman in white. She bows to him solemnly.

“ _Sode no_ _Shirayuki?_ ” Ichigo asks, and she nods silently. She has cut her hair and it falls only to her chin; the jewels that decorated it are gone. Her kimono is shredded, and pale skin peeks out from beneath the torn fabric. “But… _how_?”

The zanpakutō spirit manages a shrug. “I do not know, Kurosaki-san,” she whispers. “When Rukia…” Her voice breaks. “I was pulled here. I do not know how this is possible.”

His voice breaks in turn as he says only, “I’m sorry I couldn’t save her.” There is no blame in Shirayuki’s lavender eyes, but they shift away from his, looking down at the ground beneath them.

Zangetsu is next to them again. “I’ll take care of her, King,” he promises. A coat – like the one Ichigo has in bankai – appears in his hands and he drapes it over Sode no Shirayuki’s shoulders.

“My powers are yours, Kurosaki-san,” she tells him, and Zangetsu glances at Ichigo.

“It’s okay if you seal me so that you can carry her,” he says. “It’s okay, King.” Zangetsu wraps an arm around the other spirit and says quietly, “Come on, snow lady. Let’s find somewhere for you to rest.”

It is the most solemn, the most subdued Ichigo has ever seen him and before they leave, he whispers, “Thanks, Zangetsu.”

Back in the Soul Society, Zangetsu is true to his word: he permits himself to be sealed for the first time so that Ichigo can carry Sode no Shirayuki on his right hip and Zangetsu on his left as one slender blade.

Kyōraku is shocked but not unwilling when Ichigo asks to join the Gotei 13 a few days later. The savior of four worlds cannot possibly be sent to the academy, but he isn’t ready to be a captain or even a lieutenant; Kyōraku agrees and soon Ichigo is the tenth seat of the Ninth, under Kensei. They do not object when for the first month he disappears at the end of every day like clockwork, and Byakuya does not stop him when he shows up at the manor to make offerings before Rukia’s image atop the butsudan.

Over the next decade, the younger Shinigami whisper about the officer who has _two_ zanpakutō, one as black as a moonless night and the other white as a snowfall. They say he rarely speaks but fights like a man possessed, sometimes with the black blade that becomes two and sometimes with the white blade that freezes all it touches. They say he never uses _bankai_ with the blade of ice, only with the blade called Slaying Moon. They say he takes tea with the Captain of the Sixth Division once a week and no one knows what either of them, both so taciturn, could possibly have to say to each other.

When Ichigo has been in Soul Society for fifteen years, Captain-Commander Kyōraku appoints him as captain of the Thirteenth Division. The Shinigami continue to whisper, this time that it’s strange that the division continues to have two third seats – Kiyone Kotetsu has long since joined her sister in the Fourth Division but Ichigo promotes the fourth seat to help Sentarō – and no lieutenant. But the division seems to thrive, and the whispers about it die down eventually. Sentarō tells anyone who dares to ask that the lieutenant’s seat is not available. Ichigo just stares at them until they go away.

Only the seated officers know that the Ugendo Hall holds a butsudan with two pictures on it: Captain Ukitake and Rukia Kuchiki. Sometimes the captain and lieutenant of the Sixth Division visit and they sit in the Ugendo together. The butsudan is kept impeccably clean and there is always incense burning and fresh offerings of food and flowers on the shelves. The officers know when their captain has been to the Ugendo, for Rukia’s side of the altar holds not just incense but blue forget-me-nots, purple hyacinths, and pink camellias on those days.

Every August, Ichigo hangs a lantern from the division’s gate for three days. Even the newest recruits know not to disturb it. For those three days, the butsudan overflows with offerings. No one talks about the lantern their captain leaves in his own window.

Time passes. One hundred and fifty years later Ichigo is on his way to meet Renji for a drink when he runs into a petite woman in the third southern district of the Rukongai with hair black as midnight and eyes like sparkling amethysts.

His heart leaps and twists in his chest at the sight of her, and there is a spark of recognition in her eyes as he helps her to stand, hand clasped gently around her elbow. Reiatsu flares and red thread shimmers into existence between them.

Inside him, Zangetsu smiles and Sode no Shirayuki _sings_.

**Author's Note:**

> In hanakotoba, forget-me-nots represent true love and memories, purple hyacinths represent sorrow and a request for forgiveness, and pink camellias represent longing.


End file.
